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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Salad Days

"Salad Days" typically refers to a "youthful" time in a persons life, the heyday of their youth or the peak of their abilities.

You see, I feel like right now, I am smack dab in the middle of some of my best "salad days." Justin and I are young, newlyweds (btw - how long can you hold on to that title?), no kids. We both have great jobs with income - and nothing to spend it on but ourselves. We can go and do without batting an eye. If we get a wild hair, we jump on it.

In 2012, we kicked off our year on a cruise in the Bahamas. In April, we made a road trip to Florida and spent four GLORIOUS days at Disney World fulfilling perhaps the biggest wish on my Baby Bucket List. In May/June we trekked back to Florida for a week at the beach. We spent a few days at Osage Beach in August, and spent a long weekend in St. Louis in September for our anniversary. We made it to two Cardinals games (one which we literally had about 4 hours notice, took the tickets and made a FLYING trip to STL) and to the Fox Theater twice. We spent a few days in Dallas, TX at the end of September. It was, as we like to say, the Poleys "Year of Fun."

In between all the traveling, we ate a lot of good food, saw some good movies, and shopped - a lot. We bought a new vehicle (thank you Jesus) since both of ours were holding out since college. I made some changes to our home, and we eventually put it on the market. We paid off a lot of debt. And anytime we decided to go and do, whether it was a vacation or just to the movies, the only thing we had to worry about was making sure we were off work and Oreo could stay with my parents.

And we never, ever went without something we needed - rarely going without anything we wanted (within reason, of course). When you have a family of two, there is a lot of room in the budget for fun.

I can't help but look back and think how amazingly blessed we are. What a year. I mean, seriously - it was amazing to be able to see and experience so much together.

Entering 2013, I kept thinking about what this year is going to bring. And while I LOVED the past year we experienced, I hope 2013 is not as full - at least, in a material way. Because we don't want to be just a family of two anymore, with no one else to spend our money on. We don't want to not have to think twice about up and leaving when we get a wild hair, because we are just a family of two..... And I just don't know how easy that is going to be for us.

We sat down and had a long conversation because we finally had some serious interest on our house. The home we are looking to purchase is significantly more than what our mortgage is now. It is a balancing act for sure. Would we rather come home each evening to a place that felt peaceful, serene and sheltered - or go on a cruise and to the beach and replace my old, decrepit car? But what if we buy this home only to find out that we will have to pay thousands of dollars to have a baby? Because if anyone else out there has tried selling a house in this market - when you finally get an offer, it is asinine to wait for something better to come along!

I just don't know. So many unanswered questions. But what I do know is this. Our salad days of 2012 have the potential of looking much, much different than our salad days of 2013. Because I am praying, that the days of 2013 become filled with deciding which paint color the bathroom should be or where we should place our furniture instead of which bikinis I should pack for the beach. I am praying that our days of 2013 are filled with appointments to see our growing baby instead of weekends dashing from one mall or ballgame to the next.

I am so grateful at what this last year has offered. We made so many memories of just the two of us that can never, ever be replaced. No amount of money in the world could change the way we would have spent them. But I have this longing, this desire, for our days to slowly change into something else.

And please, feel free to remind me - when I am 90 months pregnant one day, trying to move into a new house in the middle of a sweltering summer heatwave OR massive winter snow storm, that I asked for this :)